A food processor is an indispensable kitchen appliance for any home cook, from the novice to the seasoned chef. Whether you’re looking to chop vegetables, knead dough, shred cheese, or puree soups, the best food processor can significantly cut down on prep time and expand your culinary horizons. In 2024, the market is brimming with options, each promising to be the ultimate kitchen assistant. We’ve rigorously tested a range of food processors to bring you our top recommendations, ensuring you find the perfect model to suit your needs and budget.
Top Food Processors of 2024: Overview
Navigating the world of food processors can be overwhelming. From budget-friendly models to high-end, feature-rich machines, the choices seem endless. To simplify your decision, we’ve put several leading food processors through a series of tests, evaluating their performance across various tasks, ease of use, design, and overall value. Our lineup includes models from top brands like Breville, Hamilton Beach, Cuisinart, Ninja, and more. We assessed each processor based on chopping onions, grating cheese, making pie crust, and pureeing hummus to determine the best performers in different categories.
Best Overall Food Processor: Breville Sous Chef Pro
The Breville Sous Chef Pro consistently impresses us with its thoughtful design and exceptional performance, making it our top pick for the best food processor in 2024. While it comes with a premium price tag, the Breville Sous Chef Pro justifies the investment with its versatility, power, and user-friendly features.
Breville offers a comprehensive suite of attachments for the Sous Chef Pro, including essential blades and discs like a slicing blade, dough blade, slicing disc, and grating disc. For those who frequently use a food processor, the additional attachments can further expand its capabilities. Breville also stands out by including storage solutions for these attachments in many of their machines, a welcome feature to keep your kitchen drawers organized.
Breville Sous Chef Pro 16 cup food processor with an array of attachments neatly organized in a storage caddy.
What We Love About the Breville Sous Chef Pro:
- Exceptional Design: The Breville Sous Chef Pro is meticulously designed, making it intuitive to use and efficient in performance.
- Powerful Motor: Its 1000-watt motor handles tough tasks with ease, ensuring consistent results.
- Versatile Attachments: Comes with a wide range of attachments for various food processing tasks.
- Adjustable Slicer: The adjustable slicer with 24 settings allows for precise slicing thickness.
- Attachment Storage: Includes storage for attachments, keeping them organized and accessible.
What Could Be Better:
- Weight: At 16 pounds, it’s heavy and can be cumbersome to move, especially for those with limited upper body strength or high cabinets.
- Not Dishwasher Safe Components: While cleaning is relatively easy, the components are not dishwasher safe, requiring hand washing.
Breville Sous Chef Pro Specs:
- Dimensions: 7.5″ x 8.5″ x 17″
- Weight: 16 lbs
- Power: 1000 Watts
- Attachments: Stainless steel spindle, micro-serrated S-blade, adjustable slicer with 24 settings, reversible shredder, dough blade.
- Warranty: 1 year limited
Best Budget Food Processor: Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Duo Plus 12-Cup Food Processor
If you’re seeking excellent performance without breaking the bank, the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Duo Plus 12-Cup Food Processor is our top budget pick for 2024. Priced significantly lower than our top overall choice, the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth offers impressive capabilities for its price point.
While it may not match the Breville Sous Chef Pro in every aspect, the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth delivers satisfactory performance across a range of tasks. Its lightweight design, relying on suction cup feet for stability, makes it easy to move and store. The 12-cup bowl and wide feed chute are convenient features, true to its “Big Mouth” name.
Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Duo Plus 12-Cup Food Processor on a kitchen countertop, highlighting its wide feed chute.
What We Love About the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth:
- Affordable Price: Offers excellent value for money, costing significantly less than premium models.
- Wide Feed Chute: Accommodates larger pieces of food, reducing pre-cutting.
- Satisfactory Performance: Performs well in most food processing tasks, especially for the price.
- Lightweight: Easy to move and store due to its lighter weight.
What Could Be Better:
- Pureeing Performance: Doesn’t achieve the same silky smooth results as higher-end models when pureeing.
- Stability: May wobble slightly when processing heavy or wet ingredients.
- Noise Level: Can be louder compared to premium food processors.
- Limited Attachments: Comes with fewer attachments compared to more expensive brands.
Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Specs:
- Dimensions: 7.5″L x 10″W x 14.7″H
- Weight: 8 lb.
- Power: 500 Watts
- Accessories: Reversible shredding/slicing disc, 4-cup bowl
- Warranty: Limited 1-year for the entire unit
Other Food Processors We Tested
While the Breville Sous Chef Pro and Hamilton Beach Big Mouth are our top recommendations, we tested several other food processors that are worth considering, depending on your specific needs and preferences.
Cuisinart Core Custom 13-Cup Food Processor
Cuisinart is a brand synonymous with food processors, having introduced the appliance to the American market in 1973. The Cuisinart Core Custom 13-Cup Food Processor is a modern iteration of their classic design, offering compatibility with attachments that can convert it into a juicer, blender, and mini food processor. While it excels at pureeing, shredding, and mincing, we found it less consistent when chopping onions, with some larger pieces getting stuck under the blade. The components also require a bit more fidgeting to lock into place compared to the Breville.
Cuisinart Core Custom 13-Cup Food Processor showcasing its sleek design and various components.
Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor
The Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor is the modern version of the original Cuisinart, maintaining a design that has stood the test of time. It remains a high-quality and functional food processor. However, in our tests, it was outperformed by the Breville Sous Chef Pro, which was quieter, more versatile, and easier to set up.
Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor, a modern take on the classic Cuisinart food processor design.
Cuisinart 9-Cup Continuous Feed Food Processor
The Cuisinart 9-Cup Continuous Feed Food Processor is designed for processing large quantities of ingredients without interruption. It ejects processed food out the side, rather than into the bowl. While excellent for tasks like shredding large amounts of cheese or chopping vegetables, it lacks versatility and struggled to achieve a fine puree in our hummus and pesto tests. Its smaller size also limits its overall capacity compared to other models.
Cuisinart 9-Cup Continuous Feed Food Processor, illustrating its continuous feed feature for large batch processing.
Breville Sous Chef Pro 16-Cup Food Processor
The Breville Sous Chef Pro 16-Cup Food Processor is the larger sibling to our top pick. It offers a larger capacity and an expanded set of attachments, including a mini bowl for smaller tasks. While it boasts the same excellent design and performance as the 12-cup model, its larger size and heavier weight (26 lbs) made the slightly smaller version our preferred choice for everyday use. However, if you frequently cook for large groups or need the extra capacity, this is an excellent option.
Breville Sous Chef Pro 16-Cup Food Processor, a larger capacity version of the top-rated Sous Chef Pro.
Ninja Professional Plus 9-Cup Food Processor
The Ninja Professional Plus 9-Cup Food Processor stands out with its affordable price and unique blade design featuring an additional blade on the spindle. However, in our tests, this design proved less effective for chopping, leaving larger chunks of onion and cheese. Despite its affordability, its performance didn’t match up to other models in our lineup.
Ninja Professional Plus 9-Cup Food Processor, showcasing its modern design and blade system.
Magimix by Robot Coupe 16-Cup Food Processor
The Magimix by Robot Coupe 16-Cup Food Processor is known for its reputation in professional kitchens. However, in our home kitchen testing, it didn’t live up to expectations. It was noisy and vibrated violently during operation and leaked flour during pie dough processing. Furthermore, it comes with a plethora of attachments without any storage solution, which is impractical for home users with limited kitchen space.
Magimix by Robot Coupe 16-Cup Food Processor, often used in professional kitchens but less practical for home use.
KitchenAid 13-Cup Exact Slice Food Processor
The KitchenAid 13-Cup Exact Slice Food Processor features a modular storage design for attachments, which we appreciated. However, its bulky base and inconsistent performance across our tests were drawbacks. Ultimately, it didn’t stand out compared to other models in terms of overall performance and user experience.
KitchenAid 13-Cup Exact Slice Food Processor with its black matte finish and modular attachment storage.
GE 12 Cup Food Processor
The GE 12 Cup Food Processor unfortunately underperformed in most of our tests. We encountered difficulties fitting ingredients into the bowl without pre-chopping, and the shredding discs fit poorly. It failed to produce a smooth puree in our hummus test, resulting in a grainy texture even after extended processing.
GE 12 Cup Food Processor, a budget option that underperformed in key food processing tasks.
How We Tested and Chose the Best Food Processors
Our selection process for the best food processors of 2024 involved rigorous testing and evaluation. We subjected each machine to four distinct tests to assess different facets of their performance.
- Onion Chopping: We used the standard chopping blade to blitz an onion, evaluating the consistency of the dice and noting any unevenness.
- Cheese Grating: We grated a block of cheddar cheese using the grating disc, observing the shredding efficiency and the amount of cheese left unprocessed.
- Pie Crust Making: We made pie crust, utilizing the dough blade where available, to assess dough kneading capabilities.
- Hummus Pureeing: We prepared hummus to evaluate each machine’s ability to puree ingredients to a smooth consistency.
Beyond performance tests, we also considered design features, particularly safety mechanisms and ease of use. Food processors have fast-spinning blades and safety features are crucial. We assessed how easily the components clicked and locked into place, favoring machines that were intuitive and user-friendly. We also prioritized practical attachments that would be genuinely useful in a home kitchen, rather than a large number of redundant or unnecessary tools. Bonus points were awarded to models that offered attachment storage solutions.
Do You Need a Food Processor and a Blender?
It’s a common question whether a food processor or a blender is sufficient, or if both are necessary kitchen appliances. While there’s some overlap, particularly in pureeing, food processors and blenders serve distinct purposes. A food processor, with its various attachments, can function as a grater, chopper, and dough mixer – tasks that even the most advanced blenders cannot handle.
However, blenders excel at tasks involving liquids, such as smoothies and soups, where their design is optimized for creating smooth mixtures. Attempting to make a smoothie or hot soup in a food processor can lead to leaks and spills due to its bowl and lid design, unless processed in small batches. Therefore, depending on your cooking habits, having both a food processor and a blender can be highly beneficial, offering versatility for a wider range of culinary tasks.
Conclusion: Choosing the Best Food Processor for You in 2024
Choosing the best food processor in 2024 depends on your individual needs and budget. For the best overall performance and features, the Breville Sous Chef Pro remains our top recommendation, justifying its premium price with its exceptional design and versatility. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly option that still delivers solid performance, the Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Duo Plus 12-Cup Food Processor is an excellent choice. Other models like the Cuisinart series offer a range of features and price points, while the Ninja and GE models demonstrate that price isn’t always indicative of performance. Ultimately, consider your typical food preparation tasks, budget, and kitchen space when making your decision to select the best food processor for your kitchen in 2024.
